NO NEED TO TAKE A POLL – It should be clear from the familiar pole that this is the shop of Gary Gomes, the “Barber of C’ville.”

Pine Street in Centerville has a little business district that suggests why Barnstable has earned the honor of “All-America” town.

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The “Barber of C’ville” is “half-Wampanoag…more native than most natives,” said Gary Gomes. He opened his business in the Centerville Shopping Center in 1981 and bought his present property in 1996.

“We’re a destination business,” he said. Two of his clients, he said, travel from Plymouth and Worcester so he can cut their hair.

After graduation from Barnstable High School in 1977, Gomes, who grew up in Cotuit, trained at a barber school in Boston – “right on the edge of the Combat Zone” – for seven months. He then went to work in 1978 in Hyannis shops owned by other barbers before he ventured out on his own in Centerville.

The Centerville Shopping Center was “a terrific location to develop a business,” Gomes said. He notes the benefits of businesses grouped together: “People can get a lot of errands done at once.”

Now, on Pine Street, Gomes offers his services in a smaller business environment, near an insurance agency and a florist. It was quiet on a Saturday morning, and Gomes reflected on how the economy affects his trade.

“I see a lot of homemade haircuts on the street and at the mall now,” he said, “especially on children. I’ve never seen it like this before.”

Gomes says that he has addressed the new climate by expanding his hours. He wants to make sure that clients will have plenty of appointment time choices and a live voice on the phone.

He compared his clientele’s loyalty to “a doctor’s or a dentist’s. They reward you with loyalty when the quality of your work is consistent.”

Gomes praises other business “mentors” who have helped him over the years. “Rene and Marcel Poyant took a chance on me as a 19-year-old,” he recalled. “And they have helped many other small businesses over the years. Tom McNulty is my attorney and Dan Sciolletti as my accountant helped too.”

Now Gomes owns not only his business, but, since 1996, his property. He says that equity in the business makes the difference in his slightly out-of-the-way location.

About his shop’s name?

No, he’s not an opera fan. Again, Gomes gives credit to someone else. “My high school buddy, Ted Mullin, came up with it. And it’s a home run.”

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O’Brien’s Centerville Insurance Agency has operated on its Pine Street property since 1939. The president, Stephen O’Brien, says that his father started the business then, and that family members have lived in a “compound” there ever since.

After Stephen O’Brien came home from World War II, he and his father built the current business building in 1950. He said that although his business has experienced “some trickle-down effect” from the economy, his location still feels right.

“It’s easily accessible, and we like to work with customers who prefer personal contact,” he said. “You can come in and talk to somebody instead of using a computer.”

O’Brien recalls that Pine Street may have been called South County Road decades ago, a forerunner to Route 28. Perhaps when his father opened the insurance agency, he took advantage of what was then heavy traffic.

According to a brochure provided by O’Brien, his is “a native Cape Cod family” who “have lived in Centerville for four generations.”

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A “little business” was Scott Frank’s dream when he saw a For Sale sign on Pine Street in 1999. Now he and his wife live on the property, home to their Flower Pot Florist and Garden Center, and she says that he comes home for lunch almost every day from another business he owns out of town.

“Business is not that good” right now on Pine Street, Frank said. “You’re gonna give flowers, or you’re gonna fill your gas tank. Supermarkets offer grab-and-go convenience for wreaths and other holiday decorations when gas money is tight.”

The florist shop is a “grandfathered use” at the location, he said, and instead “it would be nice to be a coffee shop, but our hands are tied.”

The man who would love to have his own coffee shop on Pine Street buys his cups every day in another place “because I know the people.”

Frank noted, “Everybody wants to give back to the little business, but no one has time to give. Florists depend upon the seasons, but this year we lost money on wreaths.”

His wife, Marilda, came from Brazil 17 years ago, she said, and met him at her sister’s house.

So in just these three little businesses on Pine Street, almost every group on Cape Cod has its story. Their names are Wampanoag, and Irish, and Brazilian.